Fraternal greetings to you all from Bauchi where I’m attending a two-day capacity building workshop for journalists from both print and electronic media. The gathering tagged, Journalists against Corruption Workshop, is organised by the Centre for Information Technology and Development better known as CITAD, a non-governmental organisation with its head office in Kano. The funding support came from MacArthur Foundation, an international NGO. I was one of the resource persons at the programme.
It was not my first time in Bauchi, I have been there several times but my last time here is five years ago. I was thus very impressed with the developments in the state. Bauchi now has an Air Force base and a brand new network of roads among other infrastructures. In case you do not know, what is today known as Bauchi State was created in 1976 from the North-Eastern State. With a population of about 5 million according to the 2006 census.
Unknown to many, Bauchi State has a total of 55 tribal groups in which Hausa, Fulani, Gerawa, Sayawa, Jarawa, Kirfawa, Turawa, Bolewa, Karekare, Kanuri, Fa’awa, Butawa, Warjawa, Zulawa and Badawa are the main tribes. In the Hausa language, the word Bauchi means the land of freedom and tourism. No wonder the state goes by the moniker, Pearl of Tourism. It is noteworthy that the state has produced many prominent Nigerians. They include the first Prime Minister of Nigeria, Alhaji Tafawa Balewa, the former Speaker of the House of Representatives, Yakubu Dogara, the immediate past Executive Secretary of Tertiary Education Trust Fund, Prof. Sulaiman Elias Bogoro, as well as the present Independent National Electoral Commission’s Chairman, Prof. Mahmood Yakubu. Interestingly, the incumbent governor of the state, Senator Bala Mohammed, popularly called Kaura, is one of the few GSMs in Nigeria. I mean those who have been governor, senator and minister.
Back to the core of this piece, CITAD was able to assemble powerful and knowledgeable resource persons to facilitate at the workshop. They include Prof Habu Muhammad of the Department of Political Science, Bayero University Kano. He presented a paper titled, Corruption: theoretical and Definitional Discourse. This was followed by my presentation titled, Reporting Corruption to the Ordinary Citizens: Demystifying Figures and Exploring Consequences of Corruption, followed by the presentation of an anti-corruption activist, Auwal Musa Rafsanjani, who is the Executive Director of Civil Society Legislative Advocacy Centre. His presentation was on Tools for Investigating Corruption.
Other facilitators include the Executive Director of CITAD, Dr Y.Z Yau, who spoke on Challenges and Opportunities in the Fight Against Corruption and Understanding and Dealing with Fake News in Investigating and Reporting. It wasn’t an all-male affair as there were also two female presenters—Mrs. Kemi Okenyedo, founder, Rule of Law and Empowerment Initiative (also known as Partners West Africa – Nigeria) whose presentation was on Security and Safety of Journalists Reporting Corruption and Jamila Dahiru of the Department of Mass Communications, Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria who delivered a paper titled, Paying Attention to Corruption Issues in Reporting Conflicts.
As rightly observed by Rafsanjani, “The media (including social media) has an important role in the fight against corruption as it can demand accountability and transparency from the public and private sectors. The United Nations recognises the significance of media in providing information on public sector corruption where governmental activity is opaque by design or by default. The media, and in particular investigative journalism, plays a crucial role in exposing corruption to public scrutiny and fighting against impunity.”
Truth be told, corruption is a global phenomenon. It has been pointed out that the world loses $2.3 trillion to corruption annually. This figure translates into five per cent of global gross domestic product. In Africa, the African Union estimated that 25 per cent of the GDP of African states or some $148 billion was lost to corruption every year. There is no gainsaying that corruption is a cankerworm that has eaten deep into the fabric of Nigerians. Despite the purported avowed fight of the regime of the President, Muhammadu Buhari (retd.), against corruption, the hydra-headed monster has refused to die. In fact, it remained a festering sore. The 2021 Corruption Perception Index by Transparency International has placed Nigeria at 154/180 countries surveyed having scored an abysmal 24/100.
As if to justify Nigeria’s poor anti-corruption rating, on Monday, May 16, 2022, operatives of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission arrested the Accountant General of the Federation, Mr Ahmed Idris, in connection with alleged diversion of funds and money laundering activities to the tune of N80 billion. A statement by EFCC said its “verified intelligence showed that the AuGF raked off the funds through bogus consultancies and other illegal activities, using proxies, family members and close associates.”
In a similar fashion, on Wednesday, May 18, 2022, the EFCC arrested the former Managing Director of the Niger Delta Development Commission, Nsima Ekere, for alleged diversion of funds to the tune of N47 billion through registered contractors of the agency. Due to the massive corruption unearthed by the forensic audit of NDDC, the commission issued a statement last Sunday saying that it has cancelled unexecuted projects awarded between 2000 and 2019. Contractors are thus expected to refund the monies for the projects.
As I observed in my presentation at the workshop, there is a need to demystify the huge figures being published about large scale corruption in Nigeria and, indeed, globally. I said, “Oftentimes when the media reports grand corruption, which more often than not is in billions of naira or foreign currencies, ordinary citizens do not understand what this humongous amount of money can do in terms of provisioning of social amenities such as schools, hospitals, kilometres of roads, airports and seaports and other infrastructures that such amount can provide. They do not know how many citizens such stolen wealth can feed. They do not know how many poor patients’ hospital bills it can pay. They are unaware of how many more jobs such gargantuan sum can create until the figures are humanised.”
Unless corruption challenges are addressed, many countries in sub-Saharan Africa risk missing their Sustainable Development Goal targets come 2030. I raised six consequences of corruption in Nigeria namely: Corruption will make Nigeria, nay Africa, unable to meet any of the 17 SDGs; retards national development; promotes poverty and unemployment; exacerbate insecurity; leads to social unrest (strikes, protests e.g. #EndSARS) and, finally, promotes trust deficit between the leaders and the led.
In my recommendations, I posited as follows: It is gratifying that the president on Thursday, May 12, 2022, in Abuja signed into law three bills aimed at improving anti-money laundering and counterterrorist financing/proliferation financing framework in Nigeria. The bills are the Money Laundering (Prevention and Prohibition) Bill, 2022, the Terrorism (Prevention and Prohibition) Bill, 2022, and the Proceeds of Crime (Recovery and Management) Bill, 2022. It is hoped that these new Acts will be duly implemented. However, there is still the need to quickly pass the Whistleblower Protection Bill so that volunteers will feel safe enough to blow the whistle on corrupt practices. There is a need to intensify civic education on anti-corruption while the government has to embark on poverty reduction schemes and pay workers a living wage.
I couldn’t agree more with Prof. Habu Mohammed when he said, “Journalists can key into the fight against corruption when they understand its various dimensions and are free, independent and committed to professionalism instead of allowing idiosyncrasies to determine their news rapportage. They should expand the frontiers of investigative research to ensure balanced reportage. Sensationalism and partisan political interests are not the prerequisite elements of information dissemination. A corrupt journalist has no capacity to be fair without the fear of his action.”
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